BACKGROUND: The American Cancer Society (ACS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) collaborate to provide annual updates on cancer occurrence and trends in the United States. METHODS: Incidence data were obtained from the CDC-funded and NCI-funded population-based cancer registry programs and compiled by NAACCR. Data on cancer deaths were obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics National Vital Statistics System...

BACKGROUND: the problem of rehabilitation and improvement of the life quality of women with the postmastectomy syndrome holds an important place in the modern concept of the treatment of breast cancer. AIM: The objective of the present study was to determine the purposefulness of the early application of the available means and methods of physical rehabilitation for the improvement of the life quality in the women presenting with postmastectomy syndrome. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The study included 135 women with the postmastectomy syndrome who had undergone radical mastectomy as described by Madden followed by postoperative radiotherapy...

BACKGROUND: Reoperation after breast-conserving surgery (BCS) is common and has been partially associated with the lack of consensus on margin definition. We sought to investigate factors associated with reoperations and variation in reoperation rates across breast surgeons at our cancer center. METHODS: Retrospective analyses of patients with clinical stage I-II breast cancer who underwent BCS between January and December 2014 were conducted prior to the recommendation of 'no ink on tumor' margin...

In 2009, the revised United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) guidelines recommended against routine screening mammography for women age 40-49 years and against teaching self-breast examinations (SBE). The aim of this study was to analyze whether breast cancer method of presentation changed following the 2009 USPSTF screening recommendations in a large Michigan cohort. Data were collected on women with newly diagnosed stage 0-III breast cancer participating in the Michigan Breast Oncology Quality Initiative (MiBOQI) registry at 25 statewide institutions from 2006 to 2015...

BACKGROUND: One reason for the low cancer screening rate in Japan is that people are not concerned about cancer if they do not have symptoms. METHODS: The authors retrospectively analyzed 18,405 cancer patients using hospital-based cancer registry data collected between 2007 and 2013 at the 13 hospitals of Shimane Prefecture, Japan. The symptomatic rates of five cancers (stomach, colorectal, lung, breast, and cervix) at each stage and the time of early diagnosis were investigated...

Background and aim: Breast cancer, a heterogeneous disease, is the most common cause of cancer-related death in women worldwide. Despite considerable developments in treatment modalities, a subset of patients with advanced-stage breast carcinoma display poor prognosis. Breast cancer heterogeneity and risk of recurrence could be explained with the help of cancer stem cell hypothesis. Stem cells have the capacity to self-renew and differentiate into multiple cell types. Aldehyde dehydrogenase-1 (ALDH1), an enzyme responsible for the oxidation of intracellular aldehydes, contributes to normal and tumor stem cell differentiation...

Nowadays, cancer is one of the most dangerous and deadly disease all around the world. Cancer that is diagnosed at early stages is more likely to be treated successfully. Treatment of progressed cancer is very difficult, and generally surviving rates are much lower. Therefore, much research has been focused on developing non-invasive methods for detection of cancer and monitoring of its progress. Within this contribution, we present a novel strategy for selective isolation and detection of breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7 and BT-20) based on surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)...

DPP-IV "a moonlighting protein" has immerged as promising pathway to control Type 2 diabetes as well as found to play key role in earlier stages of cancer. Here we have reported design, synthesis and applications of aminocoumarin derivatives as DPP-IV inhibitors. Compounds have been synthesized and studied for their DPP-IV inhibition activity. Three compounds have shown moderate inhibition at 100 µM concentration. All compounds were also screened for their anticancer activity against A549 (Lung cancer cell line), MCF-7 (Breast cancer cell line) using MTT assay...

OBJECTIVES: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy can increase the rate of breast-conserving surgery by downstaging disease in patients with breast cancer. The aim of this study was to determine whether patients who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy have equal survival after breast-conservation therapy compared with mastectomy. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Using the New Jersey State Cancer Registry (NJSCR) patients with a primary breast cancer diagnosed between 1998 and 2003 who underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy were selected (n=1,468)...

BACKGROUND: Brain metastases (BM) occur in ∼5% of breast cancer patients. BRCA1-associated cancers are often basal-like and basal-like cancers are known to have a predilection for central nervous system metastases. We performed a matched-pair analysis of breast cancer patients with and without BRCA mutations and compared the frequency of BM in both groups. MATERIALS AND METHODS: From a database of 1935 patients treated for localized breast cancer at our institution from 2009 to 2014 we identified 20 patients with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations and manually matched 40 patients without BRCA mutations accounting for age, stage, estrogen receptor expression, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) expression...

Currently, the use of radioisotope and blue dye for sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) for axillary staging in breast cancer is common. Recently, indocyanine green (ICG) has been proposed as an alternative sentinel lymph node (SLN) tracking agent. We evaluated the clinical value of ICG as an additional tracer in combination with Technetium99m and as an alternative to Technetium99m for the identification of SLN in 104 breast cancer patients. 21 patients had at least 1 histologically tumor-positive SLN. All 21 patients were detected by ICG; in one of these 21 sentinel-positive patients, Technetium99m was unable to identify lymph node involvement...

Background: Breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs) are associated with the invasion of breast cancer. In recent years, studies have demonstrated different phenotypes among BCSCs. Furthermore, BCSCs of diverse phenotypes are present at different tumour sites and different histological stages. Fibroblasts are involved in the phenotypic transformation of BCSCs. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) participate in the induction of epithelial-mesenchymal transition, thereby promoting the acquisition of stem cell characteristics, but little is known about the role of normal fibroblasts (NFs) in the phenotypic transformation of BCSCs or about the effect of CAFs and NFs on BCSC phenotypes...

OBJECTIVE: Clinical trials investigating breast cancer treatment often exclude or misrepresent older adults. This study compares treatment patterns and survival of older women diagnosed with breast cancer between a Dutch and a British observational cohort. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Women aged 70 years and older diagnosed with breast cancer after 1990 with a T0-T2 tumor stage and no evidence of metastatic disease were included from a population-based cohort in the Netherlands and a British hospital-based cohort in Nottingham...

BACKGROUND: Rates of mastectomy for breast cancer treatment and immediate reconstruction continue to rise. With increasing scrutiny on outcomes and patient satisfaction, there is an impetus for providers to be more deliberate in deciding appropriate patient selection for breast reconstruction. The Breast Reconstruction Risk Assessment (BRA) Score was developed for prediction of complications after primary prosthetic breast reconstruction, focusing on calculating risk estimations for a variety of complications based on individual patient demographics and perioperative characteristics...

INTRODUCTION: Maintaining the relative dose intensity (RDI) of adjuvant chemotherapy at ≥ 85% has been associated with improved treatment outcomes in early-stage breast cancer (ESBC). Increasing evidence has suggested that patients aged ≥ 65 years can maintain the optimal RDI for standard chemotherapy regimens. The present study investigated the RDI of newer adjuvant chemotherapy regimens in this demographic. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed the data from 281 patients aged ≥ 65 years with a diagnosis of ESBC who had received adjuvant chemotherapy across 3 sites in Queensland, Australia from 2010 to 2015...

BACKGROUND: The MF07-01 trial is a multicenter, phase III, randomized, controlled study comparing locoregional treatment (LRT) followed by systemic therapy (ST) with ST alone for treatment-naïve stage IV breast cancer (BC) patients. METHODS: At initial diagnosis, patients were randomized 1:1 to either the LRT or ST group. All the patients were given ST either immediately after randomization or after surgical resection of the intact primary tumor. RESULTS: The trial enrolled 274 patients: 138 in the LRT group and 136 in the ST group...

BACKGROUND: Recent studies revealed that tumor-specific gene methylation can be detected in the circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) of cancer patients; therefore, methylated cfDNA is considered a promising biomarker. Human neuroblastoma breakpoint family member 1 (NBPF1) was originally identified in a neuroblastoma (NB) patient. The present study is the first to evaluate the presence of NBPF1 gene methylation in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in plasma of breast cancer patients. METHODS: Differentially methylated cfDNA was screened using bisulfite sequencing with a next-generation sequencer (BS-seq) among 25 breast cancer patients, 25 patients with a benign breast disease and 25 healthy female volunteers...

The Annual San Antonio Symposium was held on 5-9, December, 2017 in San Antonio, Texas, USA (1). As expected, many new studies were presented for the first time at the sessions. The unofficial opening lecture in my point of view was given on locoregional recurrence by Monica Morrow from MSKCC, New York. As always, Morrow's lecture on "Challenges in the surgical management of locoregional recurrence" attracted great interest. The other prominent conferences were given on "Individualizing Management of the Axillary Nodes" by Tari A...